In Her Wake
by Reggie's Sky Walrus
Summary: Even heroes know that there is always a balance between good and evil. After the Battle of New York this truth was forgotten, and it was so for seventeen years. But patience has a price, and it's up to the girl who never existed to understand what that is, before the debt swallows the entire world whole in the final battle between good and evil. It all lead up to this.
1. Chapter 1: The Broken Morning

AN: Hello! This story started out as just a little fic for myself, however after I got some positive encouragement I decided to upload it here. This story will generally take place seventeen years after the Battle of New York with an OC of mine (well actually a few, but we'll get to that later). Much of this work will be heavily influenced by Norse mythology, and though it is set in the MCU, I will pull a lot of things from the Comic universe as well. I would love to read reviews to hear comments and/or constructive criticism. I would also like it if you could follow or favorite this story as well if you enjoy it. This story is by no means complete at the moment, I still only have this working title for it. I'm not sure if I will continue this story on here, I've been on the fence about it. I've decided to upload this sort of "prologue" for now, and if I think others will enjoy it as much as I do I would love to continue with it. Thank you so much and enjoy!

Chapter I

The Broken Morning

_Two Years After the Battle of New York_

His left arm hit the ground first, the sharp sound of metal scraping against cement echoing through the building. As he had fallen, he had tried to turn his head behind him. His descent to the floor looked as if it was going in slow motion, a delayed movement to have one last glance behind him. By the time his eyes finally met hers, they were glass. When he hit the ground, he shattered.

The pieces of him scattered, as if a tidal wave had crashed through the room. But it only hit her. She felt as though she were drowning, gasping at air she couldn't find, being slowly dragged down into the darkness that threatened to consume her. She felt death through his, though she wasn't done breathing yet.

"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…"

Her eyes snapped away from his broken form, instead settling on the one she wished to break. When she fought she didn't focus on who it was or why she was doing what she was. Her movements flowed through her, fitting together like a ballet she hadn't quite forgotten. It was always there, archived and catalogued throughout her memory. She never purposely used them, she simply knew when to. This battle was no different from those that had come before it, but this time there was an edge that was threatening to throw her off of. Every battle she knew in that place of her mind, she won. If she didn't, she would. This time, a foreign sharpness lingered to each of her well-planned attacks. For a moment she reflected on the shattered pieces of him on the floor, wondering if one had cut her. She couldn't fall into the pain of the glass. Not yet.

"Down came the rain…"

Every strike she initiated, he blocked. Every kick she threw, he caught. Though she scarcely realized it, her sweeps and attempted throws were becoming more desperate. Still locked into focus, she barely acknowledged the fact that the unbroken man had done the impossible.

For her, the unbroken man would forever be known as the unbreakable man.

For her, the unbreakable woman would now be known as the broken woman.

"…and washed the spider out."

The sound of blood dripping onto the floor made her wake from her place of nothing. His eyes were the first things she saw when she awoke. Everything else seemed to blend into the background. They were the color of an anger she had never seen before. A type of rage that was hard to define. By the time her left arm hit the ground, she realized his eyes were the color of the sharp edge she had felt during her battle. He was the edge that she had fallen off of.

On the ground, she was finally able to give into the shards of broken glass that was the last of him, her broken man. Even though his face wasn't his own anymore, she looked into it with what was left of herself. Memories flowed freely through her head, smells and sounds and vague impressions. They were all scattered on the floor now, the last of themselves. It only seemed fitting that their pieces would lay together in the end.

She let a tear fall, running down her face into her hair. She liked to think that was the first time she had ever truly cried, and here lying beside her broken man, it would be her last.

"James."

He almost fell onto the floor with the heaved sobs he was trying to suppress. With a shaking hand against the table top counter, he turned away from the man that was once iron.

The man looked at him in a way he hadn't ever before, a feeling that shone through the crack in his iron. Today was a day of breaking.

The other man was now weeping freely, no longer having the strength to hold them back even in the presence of the man of iron and the man of stone.

"We had no idea this could happen. You have to understand that," the man of stone stated calmly. Iron may bend, but stone could never be broken. He gazed intently at the weeping man's back, as focused as one with only one eye could be.

The weeping man's world was falling in on itself, the pieces of her cutting into his side. He felt so wounded he wondered if he himself would break as she had simply by her permanent absence. Without her, the world felt wrong. She had never been his, and yet she left him in a way that suggested they would never be their own. Deep within himself he realized that he would always be hers, even after she was someone else's. He had always known that, after she had found her lost soldier. But he never let go, not completely. Now, he never would.

"Where is he?" His voice wavered, his throat scratching and aching.

The man of iron was the first to answer. "We don't…we don't know. I only came in time to make sure he didn't stay, but when I got there he was already gone," he sighed, eyes clouded. "They were already…gone."

And then the weeping man screamed. It was something he had never done before, a sound he had never heard before even from himself. In it was the pieces of himself, the pieces that she took with her. However, she was a compassionate thief. She left him with what he needed, but lost what he wanted. It was always her. It would always be her, in the end.

When he had finished he collapsed against the table, the exhaustion of the absence of her and himself weighing in on him. "There's something else," the man of stone said. He looked up at the man of stone, a small glimmer of a question shining through his tear-filled eyes.

"Come with me."

The man of iron helped him off the floor, gently averting his gaze. There was something hidden in his own eyes, something that looked like regret shining through the crack in his armor. The man of stone lead them to another room, blindingly white and lit up.

"There was something we didn't know before the attack, something we probably should have known. I doubt even she herself knew, and if she did she didn't tell anyone. For now, she doesn't even exist." The weeping man roughly rubbed his hand on his face, wiping away the tear stains and the cloudiness that plagued his eyes. he glanced down through a window to what seemed to be the hospital wing of the SHIELD building. Among the uniform beds, some filled and some unfilled, was what looked to be a small container. Inside was something even smaller, something that may or may not have been able to fit in the man's hands if he had tried to pick it up. It moved weakly, slowly as if it were trying to swim.

"We couldn't save them, Clint. But we did save her."


	2. Chapter 2: One Once Again

Chapter II

_Seventeen Years After the Battle of New York_

The breeze whipped past her, moving round her slight, huddled form. She never realized just how windy it was here. She supposed that all the buildings kept then from feeling it on the ground. She lazily gazed around her, looking over the slate colored office buildings and disregarding the noise of angry drivers and blaring cars. She looked out into the horizon, or at least, as far as she could look into the horizon. The massive abomination that was Stark Tower sort of stood out in her line of sight.

When she was up here, it wasn't that hard to tune it all out. The city sounds faded to white noise, and the industrial buildings blurred into the lightly blue sky. Her eyes slid closed, her face burrowing deeper into her arms, tugging her sweatshirt closer around her. She shivered slightly.

"Indy? Hey, do you happen to know where a fire extinguisher may be in this god damned floor?" A man was shouting gruffly from the stairs, and her head snapped to the entrance. She sighed and heaved herself off the edge of the roof, careful not to join the taxi cabs in the street bellow. The noises came back to their sharp sound and the buildings around her came into focus once again.

"I'll be right there." She shuffled ungracefully to the door of the roof, boding down the stairs to the dimly lit apartment. Indigo Budapest Barton lived on the edge of Midtown New York City. She resided in the top floor of a run-down apartment building she was pretty sure the landowner forgot about.

She maneuvered around the piles of books and papers scattered around the floor and made her way to the kitchen, which wasn't very difficult considering the smell of burning lasagna. She covered her mouth with her hand after she stretched the sleeves of her sweatshirt over it. "Only you could burn lasagna of all things," she smiled into her hand, her eyes laughing at the image of her legal guardian, the great Clint Barton, fanning the flames spewing out of their ceramic oven with a trash magazine.

"Don't just stand there, go find that damned fire extinguisher. They have to have one somewhere around here, isn't there a law for that or something?" He huffed, a smile barely gracing his lips. Though it was small, it was an improvement. He hadn't been his usual self lately, his laugh lines fading into what could be mistaken as honest-to-god wrinkles. Clint only aged when he wanted to, and after these past few weeks he had started to look ancient. Before his small grin could begin to wane she darted out to the stairs, trampling down them with as little control as possible.

As Indy wandered down the abandoned halls of the floor bellow them, her thoughts couldn't seem to settle. The worry over Clint tugged at her mind, fraying the edges of her thoughts. He had always been a little off when it came to her birthday, which was in two weeks. She was going to be sixteen. Maybe he was just having a rough time trying to accept the fact that she was growing up. Sixteen was a pretty big milestone, at least according to societal values.. It wasn't like anything was going to change for her.

She didn't need a car. They lived in New York City, where cabs were practically running through buildings the streets were so overflowed with them. Besides, she hardly went anywhere anyway. If she needed to go somewhere she just walked along the other roofs of different places to get where she wanted to go. Everything she and Clint needed were right around the corner, almost literally just a hop and a skip away. She didn't go to school. Legally she was homeschooled by Clint. The only teaching Clint ever seemed to do was trying to get her to realize her "untapped potential" as an archer. Clint had been really big into archery when he was younger. The only thing that came of that was a fine for damaging a senator's car windshield. Clint backed off the whole "training" thing after that.

If they ever needed proof that she was actually "learning" by state standards, he would call up this guy who would take care of everything. She always assumed he just had really rich friends on the New York Education Board or something.

Of course, it took her a little while to realize that this kind of lifestyle wasn't extremely normal. The only media she would be able to learn from was whatever Clint was able to pick up from the makeshift dish he had made to steal other people's networks. Usually they had to watch whatever the real owner was, which was a mix between the NBA semifinals and The Bachelor.

This didn't really bother her as much as it probably should have, since she spent most of her time outside of the house. Clint usually found her on the roof or strolling lazily through the streets that surrounded their apartment building. However, she always took time out of her day to run over to the performances at the New York City Ballet. There was a hole in the rafters that she was able to squeeze into. Every night she hung onto the railings of the catwalks with her legs dangling over the audience's heads, gazing dreamily at the ballerinas. even if she had seen the same show ten times before, she was always stupefied by the dance they put on. The story and the songs merged together through their movements, emotions normally shown on their faces now extend to arms and legs and feet. Everything blurred together to her, half from sleepiness and half from focus. When she focused on something so intensely, the parts of the world weren't separate anymore. Nothing was its own, everything was one. The world around her was connected together, a living thing, breathing together.

She wished the world really was that easy.

She only ever started going to the ballet a few years ago. Indy always knew that Clint wasn't her real dad. She had called him "Clint" since she started talking. He had a rule to not talk about her biological parents. She knew that he had known them, and until a few years ago that was all she had known about them. On one specific evening something had sparked a particularly heated conversation about her parents. She was tired of not knowing where she came from, of not knowing anything at all about her real parents. Clint was notorious for never giving up for anything. He was the stubbornest man she had ever met. For as long as she could remember, everything always was his way. After almost sixteen years of living with Clint Barton, she had become very clever. Her wit matched his stubbornness in almost every way now. But that day he caved. She had always known he was sensitive about her parents. His eyes would get glassy when she brought them up, his voice rough as he tried to turn his face away from her. Because of this she didn't ask him about them very often. That day he told her the one thing she ever knew about her mother, that she had been a ballerina when she was young.

Even as she was about to turn sixteen, that was the only thing she ever knew about her mother.

Her wandering thoughts were quickly halted as a loud bang echoed through the abandoned floor. Indy stood, frozen in place, ears strained against the sound of honking horns and sirens in the distance. Slowly, she maneuvered through the hall to the room where the sound had originated from and ducked her head in.

The room was bare, save for the ragged rug with the thread torn out laying on the floor. At the back of the small room was a window, opened with the cold February breeze floating in. A thin piece of curtain whipped around the whispering opening, and Indy hesitantly moved towards it. She slammed the creaking window shut, causing a slew of paint chips to rain down onto the floor. It must have been open for months.

As she started towards the door she quickly found herself barreling to the ground. As she heaved herself up from the ripped rug she realized she had tripped over something she hadn't noticed before.

It was a fire extinguisher.

oooooooooo

AN: Thank you for reading! Here is chapter two and I hope you enjoyed it! I should be uploading a chapter once or twice a week depending on when I have time to write. I tried to be as honest with my characterizations as possible, but I will be taking artistic liberties from time to time. Thank you so much and have a great day!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel or its characters, just this story and my OC(s).


	3. Chapter 3: Songs Without Words

Chapter III

Songs Without Words

"I bet you ten bucks you can't finish your lasagna."

Clint and Indy Barton were seated at a small scarred table in the middle of a very cramped kitchen. After Indy had delivered the mysteriously appearing fire extinguisher, Clint had battled the flames from their oven that were threatening to invade the rest of the room. The last thing they needed was a crew of firemen breaking down their splitting door and smoking them out. Clint would rather he be consumed by the devilish fire than ask for help. This was usually very problematic, but in most cases, Clint's hard-headedness had gotten them through a lot.

"I bet you ten bucks you can't finish the lasagna that _you _made, smart one," Indy laughed as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. After Clint had tamed the fires of the Hell that was their oven, Clint had retrieved the pathetic smoldering remains of his failed attempt at lasagna. Once they had realized that they were out of Kraft and ramen, Clint had reluctantly set a table for two. Now they had sat in silence, starring each other down to see who would give first. Of course, Clint's resolve was almost always unbreakable. However, when you lived with him your whole life, you were likely to pick up a few things.

Clint sighed heavily, if not a bit over exaggeratedly, and hesitantly stabbed his burnt pasta with a dull fork. Giving the grinning Indy a look of humored agitation, he tried to stare down his new opponent. After mere moments, Clint let out a breath of resignation and threw the fork down next to the remaining charred lasagna.

"Fine, you win. Take out it is," Clint huffed as he dragged himself to the ancient cord phone attached to the wall. Clint (allegedly) didn't believe in cellular communication devices, but Indy assumed they didn't have them because they obviously couldn't afford them. Clint's income as an "legal" firearms distributor wasn't exactly stable, and her job at the local traditional tea shop was just above minimum-wage. Clint raised her saying that money doesn't matter, it's what good you can do without it that really counts.

"Hey Indy, I'm going to go pick up plan B, I'll be back in a few. Don't burn the house down, kid," he smirked as he sauntered out the door. She waved his comment off and made her way to the roof. It was a night that wasn't too cold for New York City, the only thing that really bothered you was the wind. It cut right through you, cooling your blood and unleashing an uncontrollable chill down your spine. Indy wrapped her sweatshirt around her tighter and made her way across the rooftops and fire escapes of the other buildings. She was going to be late for the debut of The Rite of Spring because of the flaming lasagna incident. Between her job and the declining mental health of Clint, Indy's "free time" at the ballet had been fluctuating based on the day. Of course, she had to keep up appearances around town. Their were too many people that knew Clint around their block, and too many people that grew to love her shy smile every morning on her way to work.

By the time she arrived on the catwalks, the first act had just begun. She blinked achingly slow, and cradled her head in her arms against the railing. Slowly, she began to fall into the dance of the ballet.

oooooooooo

Clint was in his room, holding a metallic object that caught the small slivers of dulled sun that filtered through the moth-eaten curtains.

It was exactly a month before Indy's sixteenth birthday.

"Clint, can I borrow your coat, the fluffy one with the star on the arm?" Indy had (as usual) stuck her head halfway through the door so as she was not intruding but had a view of everything in the room (another trick from Clint). She had snuck in so quietly he hadn't even glanced at her before she had began to speak. Part of him wanted to commend her and part of him wanted to chastise her for not knocking. Instead, he expertly threw the object across the room so it broke through the drywall and stuck into the first layer of plaster and turned his attention to her.

His face was weathered, but he tried to stretch it into a light-hearted smile when all Indy could see was a sad, aging man. He looked very, very tired, as if he hadn't slept quite right for years.

To Clint, sometimes he felt like he hadn't.

It took a moment for him to register her question, to which he responded with a little too much faked vigor, "Sure, go ahead. You're almost sixteen now, you should be able to do what you want anyway." He added the last comment with a slight bitterness, but if you could have been close enough to look into his seemingly ancient eyes, you could have seen that it was only a brittle mask for a deep sorrow. Indy hadn't been close enough.

"Oh, of course. How could I forget," Indy snorted, darting down the hall.

Once Clint was sure she was gone by listening to her barely audible footfalls (sometimes he thought he had taught her _too _well), he let a sigh escape his lungs he thought he had been holding in forever. Once it had been caught in the nearly suffocating darkness of the dim room, the weight that had made a home on his chest settled back into its place. For years he had lived with the smothering heaviness that pushed into him, eating away at the gaping holes that had been created by Her absence. To him, it felt like as the years went on, it didn't get better like all the self-help books claimed. It only got worse, and the holes and cracks grew as the time passed. Sometimes it felt like it was all passing by so very fast, as Indy learned to walk and then tie her shoes in what seemed like a matter of minutes. Usually, it was as if time moved as slowly as it possibly could, taking enjoyment in seeing the once renowned man fall apart under its unbearable and unstoppable presence. What was worse was when it folded back in on itself, drowning Clint in a wave of memories of days that had past. He grasped at them, at their warmth and comfort. But they were tainted, poisoned with the sorrow and the grief once they had slipped through his grasp.

Clint begrudgingly pushed himself off of his moaning bed, shuffling towards the object lodged in the wall. It rained particles of plaster as he pulled it out roughly, giving little thought to the now gaping hole in the wall.

Just another one to add to the collection, Clint thought with a bitter smile.

As he examined the object, his face competing between a knowing smile and an indifferent frown. He gazed at his confident smirk, and remembered the day he had taken that photo. She had told him not to smile and that he had to look intimidating. He had tried, but with Her staring at him so intently, he cracked a small smile before the camera flashed. Once he had gotten his finished I.D., She had laughed at his "notoriously cocky grin", when all he had noticed was that his eyes weren't on the camera at the time the picture had been taken. They were on Her. He realized they always had been there that day.

Then he pulled out the identical shining item from behind the first. In the beginning, seeing Her had caused him to gasp at the agonizing pain threatening to consume him. The feeling filled him so fast and so fully he didn't even have time to cry, he just sat there, drowning without a sound. Now there was nothing. The once consuming feelings were gone, banished from his broken form. Or at least, he liked to believe that. Deep down, he knew She had never left him. Even farther along, he knew She never would. He often fought with himself about wether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Her flaming red hair flowed down around Her shoulders, looking like fire licking at Her pale face. Freckles danced across Her face like wayward constellations, seeming childish against Her stoney expression. Though She had mastered the "emotion of being emotion_less_", Clint always knew the one thing that gave Her away.

Her eyes were the color of all the budding leaves of springtime, teeming with life and the promise of it. They revealed to Clint how alive She really was, because She truly was life. He may have been the only person that had ever had the privilege to see it, but he knew when he did, he was seeing who She was.

Not Nancy Rushman, not Natasha Romanoff, not the Black Widow. Not even Natalia Alianovna Romanova.

She was life.

oooooooooo

AN: Thank you for reading! Just a reminder that though this is set in the MCU, I will be pulling a _lot _from the original comics. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me. Please follow or favorite if you liked the story so far, and review if you have any comments. Thanks again!


	4. Chapter 4: Spark of (Rebellion)

Chapter IV

Spark of (Rebellion)

Indy brushed soundlessly through the door, pulling Clint's coat on in the process. She was going to be late. Of course, she usually always was. Clint and her weren't known as the most punctual people in the city of New York, but she always noticed her smile cracked a little when Ms. Ahn greeted her happily each day. Indy was pretty sure she couldn't even read a clock, considering that any other person would have happily fired her right on the spot for being tardy even twice. But then again, she wasn't sure that even if Ms. Ahn could read a clock she still wouldn't let her go. Ms. Ahn almost lived for her sheepish smiling face every day, even if Indy wasn't that aware of it.

Ms. Ahn had immigrated from a particularly brutal part of communist-based China almost thirty years ago. She had been alone, she had only had enough money to even get on American soil due to the death of her family. She had gotten a loan to open a traditional Chinese tea shop on the outskirts of Chinatown, however she was able to purchase a new storefront in a better location out of the abyss of racist tourists that was NYC's Chinatown. Her shop had been just down the street from Clint and Indy's apartment, and even though Indy was underage, Ms. Ahn was delighted to have another body to help around the shop. More than that was the aching loneliness that came with working the shop as years past, letting her thoughts drift back towards the still torturous memories of home. Each day she was plagued by depression, making her once beautiful face wilt as she slowly caved in on herself. Being alone was like dying slowly. She had been working the shop by herself before Indy was hired.

Of course, Indy didn't know any of this about Ms. Ahn. To her, she was just an extremely forgiving boss with a soft smile that lit up her aging face.

Indy shuffled hurriedly through the flurry of light snow and the not-so-light passerby. She was shoved into a building at least twice. The third time, however, threw her into a particularly dim alley where she could have sworn was not there before.

Falling back, she tried to catch herself before she ended up on the frigid floor. Of course, she wasn't too successful with that objective.

"Well may I be the first to say, smooth moves X-Lax," a rich voice laughed heartily. Indy, who had been preparing to dash back out into the rush of indifferent pedestrians, looked up to see a warm hand extending itself towards her. Indy let out a breath somewhat irritatedly and glared at the warm-toned woman's smirking face.

"Dammit, Rozy. You can't just sneak up on me like that," Indy huffed roughly, indigently crossing her arms over her chest as the slightly older woman turned back to stare at one of the alley walls. She wasn't staring for long though, as the woman shook her spray paint can that was in her other hand and proceeded to ignore Indy was she went back to her task that she had been working on before Indy fell on her feet. Indy huffed out another irritated sigh as she leaned against the adjacent wall, with only a heavy-lidded smile over Rozy's shoulder in return.

Rozemin Jafari was perhaps Indy's only friend, if they were even that. Rozy was an American-born muslim whose parents had immigrated to from Pakistan. She was also the most brash and outlandish person Indy had ever met, rivaling even Clint in her eccentric tendencies. Rozy was a (illegal) graffiti artist whose work was very well known throughout their region of New York City. Most of her work was extremely political, and more often than not just the tiniest bit of offensive. At the moment she was shading a very unflattering caricature of George W. Bush with makeup on that was more than slightly reminiscent of the Joker. She had said more often than not.

Rozy's family had suffered greatly after 9/11. They were discriminated against, ignored by the police, and had their home vandalized several times. Growing up like this was a bit more than a reflection of her present character. She was a pessimistic street artist who often wore shirts with highly offensive curse words covered only slightly by her hijab. She was like this because she was angry. Rozemin Jafari was always angry. She didn't keep it to herself much, either.

"So, did the cops drop their charges from last week's fateful endeavor?" Indy lazily stared at Rozy's back, trying not to fall asleep as she listened to the hiss of the can and the muted sound of the street.

Rozy shrugged. "Yeah. Didn't have enough evidence this time," she replied nonchalantly, adding more black to the washed out eyeliner under the former president's eyes.

"You really need to be more careful. That last time almost put you in the slammer for a week," Indy recalled thoughtfully. They had let Rozy have five minutes on the phone every night before she went to bed, and every night she had spent her five minutes with Indy. The graffiti artist never made a big deal about it, but deep down she knew she didn't really have anyone else in this damn country, let alone the city.

Rozy groaned, letting her hands fall down against her sides and tilting her head towards the slate colored sky. "You are absolutely no fun, Indy, you know that? I'm the master at covering my tracks. I'm like a god damn ninja with these things," she replied, mockingly holding up two spray cans like guns as if she were about to strike. Indy laughed into the frigid January air, breath catching in the wind howling down the alley.

"Aw, c'mon, not even a snort?" Rozy said disappointedly, throwing her hands on her hips. "Not even a little one?" Rozy was also perhaps the only one (besides Clint) that knew that when she laughed really hard sometimes, she started snorting and wheezing through her mouth. Indy thought it was ghastly, but both Clint and Rozy agreed that it was the most adorable thing they had ever witnessed.

Indy scrubbed her face of her laughter with Clint's coat, and looked back at the pouting woman. "Not today, sunshine," Indy grinned. Rozy gave her a disgusted look and abruptly turned back to her new art piece. Indy knew that Rozy was indeed probably the polar opposite of sunshine, but to the social anxiety-ridden Indy, she was pretty damn close.

"Damn it all, Rozy," Indy scrunched her eyes together, like she was in pain. "I'm late for work." With that fond farewell, Indy rushed through the mass of passerby in the street and began to sprint towards Ms. Ahn's traditional Chinese tea shop.

"I better see your ass over here later, Indiana," Rozy cried back, but her demand was lost in the chilling wind and the deafening swarm of street-goers.

ooooooooo

The wind bit into her skin, the icy snowflakes melting into her flushed face. She darted soundlessly, almost easily through the pedestrians milling about the streets, as though it were as easy as wading through tall grasses in a plain. She was almost at the shop when a small thought flickered through her brain, a warning that was tugging at her focus. She blinked once, slowing only slightly as she treaded through the wave of people.

Suddenly, she snapped her head back without any previous warning, staring intensely out at the building next to her. Her gaze shifted upwards, and stopped at a fire escape connected uneasily to the crumbling brick wall of the building. The landing of the fire escape was vacant, besides the drying laundry hung on it swishing softly in the frigid wind. Her eyes narrowed, wary of that spot that had been nagging against her mind. Clint had always taught her that there was no such thing as being too paranoid, but usually she would just roll her eyes at him and wonder how he ever got to be so untrusting. She shook the lingering feeling of doubt off easily enough, and continued on her way to Ms. Ahn's shop.

Indy was first greeted by the overpowering heat of the small tea shop as she glided into the room, snowflakes following her in retaliation to the invite sent by the opening of the door. She breathed in the almost overpowering scents, different teas creating conflict with her senses as she tried to recognize each one at once.

"Dian, good morning, child," Ms. Ahn cooed softly from behind the counter where she was reorganizing the different teas. She reorganized the teas at least twice a week, her excuse was that she had to make sure they were all in the right place. If Indy didn't know any better, she would have thought that Ms. Ahn had nothing better to do.

Ms. Ahn's smile warmed her whole face, and Indy could have sworn that she noticed another wrinkle gain its rank against the many others that lined her face. Indy wondered sadly why everyone around her was getting so old. Age seemed to be pressing against her even faster than usual as of late, and it left Indy with a hollow feeling.

Instead of voicing her thoughts she smiled her small, shy smile, shuffling hesitantly over to her normal place of work.

"I'm really sorry I'm late again, Ms. Ahn. I got a little…winded," she said softly, guilt crinkling her smile as she shed her coat.

"No worries, my Dian. You are right on time," Ms. Ahn responded, smiling still as she turned away from her, back to the overflowing stacks of tea leaves.

oooooooooo

AN: Sorry this is so very late! I've been a bit discouraged/preoccupied (working on another new fic. Whoops), but don't worry I'll be back very soon. I'm sorry if this chapter seemed like I was throwing too many characters at you, and I was hoping to throw out another, but I didn't want to push the plot. Next chapter should be a bit more eventful. Thank you for reading, and please follow, favorite or review this story if you like. Thanks again!


	5. Chapter 5: For Now

Chapter V

For Now

"God dammit, you people already now I hate it when you track my account!"

The shouts of frustration could be heard from across the hall, and it was definitely not the first time Indy had ever silently thanked whatever powerful entity there was that no one else lived in the abandoned apartment building. She silently slid through the door, ever so quietly shifting the door behind her to find its way back to its natural closed position. She inherently froze in her crouched stance, waiting a few beats to make sure Clint hadn't heard her entering.

"If I have told you once I have told you assholes a hundred times. What is this, the second call I've gotten from you only this month?"

The continuous relenting yelling of Clint confirmed her of his ignorance of her presence in the apartment. She shrugged off her (Clint's) coat and threw it across the arm of the forlorn chair shoved in the corner. The Barton's humble abode was littered with rummage sale-bought furniture, worn in the corners with frayed gashes and faded stains spread unevenly on their surfaces. Of course, Indy never minded. She didn't ever see a reason why she should.

The annoying nagging guilt of eavesdropping on Clint's conversation soon won out against her curiosity, and she stalked into the kitchen where Clint was gripping the counter with white knuckles, clutching the phone that was firmly attached to the wall.

Though Indy never knew who Clint was ever speaking to, she knew this conversation well. She had heard many variations of it multiple times, usually once every month or so ever since she could remember. They would usually become more frequent during specific periods of her life, and she began to associate the calls with times of financial trouble for the odd pair. She let a wayward sigh push itself past her cracked lips, throwing herself dramatically into the chair settled near the small kitchen table.

Clint's gaze flickered towards her, the frustrated anger shifting into an unspoken apology before he continued on with his rant as his eyes fixed on a particularly rotting part of their kitchen cabinet.

"Oh yeah? Well you can tell _him _that he can come on over for a bottle of Jack Daniels to tell me that himself, because I have had more than enough of you people to last me, no pun intended, a lifetime. Now for the, I pray to god, last time, I do not and will never accept your offer and I will be changing my number again. Never call me ever again and have a nice day." Clint slammed the plastic phone back into its holder, and Indy could have sworn that there was one more crack in the wall when he practically threw the phone against it.

Clint leaned against the counter, breathing with his eyes closed until he had sufficiently lowered his heart rate. Indy had been nagging him about that lately.

"So…I'm going to guess that you had a good day," Indy smirked as she munched on a half-eaten pop tart from earlier that morning.

Clint spared a glance at her, first conveying the amused annoyance he always wore, but soon shifting into something different entirely. The same unsaid apology from earlier wormed itself back into his gaze, making his face crumple a little under its pressure. He flashed her a small, obviously half-hearted smile towards her as he moved over to ruffle her dark hair.

"You know it, Indy," he sighed, meandering towards his room.

The taste in her mouth became prominently artificial in a heartbeat, the flavor becoming ashen instantly. The same thought from before flickered briefly through her mind. The feeling of everything becoming old around her, crumbling and cracking as it all collapsed in on itself around her. The thought was only in her mind for a moment, but it left her feeling oddly hollow all the same.

With slightly more menace than she intended, Indy sighed heavily and trudged over to her room. She expertly closed her door without slamming it at the last second and flopped angrily on her creaking bed. She had learned from Clint that anger was a much easier emotion to deal with from sadness, though it was unknown to Indy how deeply he lived based on this one small teaching. Indy was contemplating going for a quick run across the roofs before a flash of red, white and blue caught her eye.

She turned her head slightly to get a better view of the forlorn-looking poster, partially covered with a menagerie of post-it notes (she was forgetting things constantly) and part of her chipped desk. She was greeted by a confidently-grinning Captain America, clad in his original World War II-era costume, brandishing his trademark shield and a respectful salute. It was one of the original propaganda posters from WWII, urging men to join in the fighting. Clint had gotten it for her for her ninth birthday. It had taken him a few weeks worth of bargaining with the pawn shop owner down the street, but Clint's perseverance had gotten him the poster and an uncharacteristically large hug from the small Indy. She had been very into superheroes as a kid, most notably Captain America.

She was pretty sure Clint still had shaky home videos of her clad on her homemade costume, masquerading around the roofs as the valiant fighter of freedom. Though she knew, as well as everyone else in the world, that Captain America hadn't been heard from in many, many years, but her childhood wish (as irrational as it was and to Clint's absolute horror) was to someday fight alongside the famed Captain America and help him fight for the people. As she grew up she began to notice the absurdity that her request was. Even if Captain America hadn't seemingly fallen off the face of the Earth over ten years ago, she knew she could never be capable of saving anyone, let alone the planet, as superheroes were known to do.

Simply put, Indigo Budapest Barton was absolutely, inconceivably, heartbreakingly ordinary. For a while she blamed this fact on her not knowing where she came from, but it didn't take her long to realize that where you came from didn't make up who you were, and what she was, at least her point of view, was pretty close to insignificant. It wasn't something she dwelled on or used to fuel some kind of misplaced self-pity. It was just a fact, as plain and simple as she was.

And for now, that was alright.

oooooooooo

Indy had woken up staring at the still shining face of Captain America, reminded of her previous reflection of days past.

She threw herself off her bed and sauntered unsteadily to the kitchen. With a quick look around the apartment, she deduced that Clint was still sleeping. Unfazed by this conclusion, she sloppily threw her harshly cut hair into a ponytail and pulled out a new box of pop tarts. Here at The Barton's apartment, healthy eating was at the top of their list of priorities. Sparing an uneasy glance at the clock mounted on the god-awful wallpaper of their kitchen, Indy winced and threw herself out the door. For probably the third time that week, she told herself that she really needed to get an alarm clock.

Practically flying down the street, she roughly put on Clint's coat that she had grabbed from the chair and continued on her way to her place of work. She quickly prayed that she didn't get shoved into another alleyway as a repeat of yesterday. She really didn't have time for another run in with her favorite delinquent, at least not today.

A pang of guilt hit her heart, and with a grimace she realized she was getting used to the feeling. She really, really needed to invest in a good alarm clock. She felt as if she was being hit with a massive amount of deja vu, considering the fact that she once again was plagued with an overwhelming feeling of being watched. All of this was feeling vaguely familiar, the anger, the guilt, the confusion towards the most prominent of life's truths, and the unease beginning to crawl up her spine that left her mind feeling like it had been doused with freezing water. She didn't have time to look behind her this time, instead trying to shove all the reoccurring emotions harshly into the recesses of her mind. She didn't have time for this.

Indy steeled her gaze, schooling her features into a scowl as she pushed the unwanted inner conflict to the side. Once she was pleased with her somewhat unhealthy way of dealing with her feelings, she focused solely on her task off pushing through the common NYC street pedestrians to get to Ms. Ahn's at a somewhat reasonable time. She was, of course, aware that a somewhat reasonable time would have been almost half an hour ago, but something else was tugging impatiently at her thoughts.

It could have easily been the misplaced anger. Or the gnawing guilt. Or the paralyzing confusion. Though Indy would have loved to have brushed off her current feeling as any one of her past emotions pushed back into the recesses of her mind, she knew they were not. She had no idea why she was running so fast, why she was becoming increasingly more violent in her shoves towards the passerby, why she was quickly being filled with a feeling of dread from an unknown origin. It moved its why up her form, until the uncontrollable emotion lodged itself stubbornly in her throat. The strange feeling subdued, Indy continued in her blind haze towards the small tea shop, practically ripping the door off its hinges in her onslaught of misplaced haste and fear.

Indy would later equate this moment in time to be the precise moment that everything changed, and the shift from her life she had known forever nearly threw her to the ground, not yet understanding how deep this one moment changed absolutely everything she had ever known about herself and everything else around her.

However, a Barton doesn't give up quite that easily.

oooooooooo

AN: Hello! Sorry this was also a bit late. Next chapter is when things finally start to pick up, so don't be so forlorn dear readers! I know this whole introduction thing has been a bit tedious, but for this story, it's extremely important that I don't rush into the main plot. That would be…_disastrous_(wink wink). Thank you for reading, and please follow, favorite and review! It would mean a lot! See you all sometime soon!


	6. Chapter 6: Of Snow and Blossoms

Chapter VI

Of Snow and Blossoms

Indy heard Ms. Ahn before she actually saw her.

Her muffled sobs pierced the air, as the elderly woman tried to regain her natural breathing pace as the shock slowly began to wear off.

Indy tore through the small shop, hitting her shoulder against shelves as she narrowly missed sharp corners. She wasn't really paying attention at that point, her sole purpose was to find the distressed Ms. Ahn.

"Ms. Ahn, are you alright? What happened? Are you hurt?" Indy found her wrapped around herself in a corner behind her desk at the back of the store. Now that she had found Ms. Ahn, she took a moment to quickly glance around her place of work. Glass containers of tea leaves lay shattered on the floor from their original positions snug on the towering shelves. Papers were strewn randomly about the floor, dancing softly with the shards of glass and potent tea leaves. As the scene unfolding around her became clearer, her vision became even more clouded. Her anger was ferocious, frightening even herself at its unnatural malice. Indy was not known to be a very violent or easily angered person.

However, there were always exceptions to every rule.

"Dian," Ms. Ahn started weakly from the floor. The anger dissipated almost instantly, replaced instead by a concern that seeped through her face, softening her pointed features.

"Ms. Ahn, I'm so sorry," Indy tried as she supported the older woman to her feet. Leaning against the much taller Indy, Ms. Ahn gave only a small smile in return.

"Not your fault, dear dian," Ms. Ahn whispered softly, sadness tinting her glinting eyes. For a second Indy was able to feel her sorrow, a wave of empathy crashing against her unexpectedly. Indy caught herself, instead schooling her features in a look of deathly seriousness as she lowered Ms. Ahn onto a heavily pillowed chair.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Before waiting for an answer, Indy looked quickly over the woman's face and began examining the rest of her small body. The woman let out a breathy laugh, tinged with almost undetectable bitterness.

"I have suffered through worse, dian."

Indy smiled softly, something that didn't reach her gaze that was slowly filling with unadulterated sadness. Giving up on her search for injury that didn't exist, she dropped her hands in defeat in Ms. Ahn's lap. In return, the old woman put her small, scarred hand softly against Indy's cheek. Ms. Ahn had always been like a grandmother to Indy. She never had any maternal figures in life, and Ms. Ahn was like an angel of generosity to Clint when she offered to give Indy a job. And this was the way she repaid her, Indy thought bitterly as she nuzzled into the touch.

Clint wasn't exactly a very touchy-feely kind of guy. He didn't exactly scream warm and fuzzy, and that was the way it was growing up. Indy never really complained, considering she didn't know any better for most of her life.

Lifting her hand to cradle Ms. Ahn's that still rested on her cheek, she slowly lowered it to hold it on her knees.

"Who did this to you?" The anger flashed back into her eyes like a bolt of lightning on a generally untouched field. Indy's features sharpened back into their guarded position, shifting from the raw guilt and sadness she had shared with Ms. Ahn moments earlier. Now that Indy knew she was alright, she had to make sure whoever did this wasn't.

Ms. Ahn read Indy so well sometimes she was sure she could read her mind. Her mouth formed a solid line, quietly mulling over a suitable answer to give to Indy. She didn't want her to do anything stupid, as she generally did when she was in such a heated mood. She knew that once the rage flashed once behind her eyes, a quiet thunder rolling across her features, was when there was no going back. All she could do was make sure she didn't hurt herself in her angry, blind haze.

"Just a few kids, dian. Took the money from last week," Ms. Ahn sighed, shifting her gaze out her now cracked shop window. Indy ignored her vague comment, and instead followed the path her gaze took out the window.

Once she saw it, Indy was gone.

And everything else went out the broken window.

oooooooooo

Indy could vaguely hear Ms. Ahn's muffled protests over her shoulder, warning and pleading with her against her future actions. If it had been any other day, she probably would have listened to her words and sighed in resignation as she sauntered back to the shop.

But today was a different kind of day, the kind of day that made time shift and cave in on itself as what was meant to be was no longer probable and what wasn't now was. Of course, Indy didn't know this yet. She would soon enough, all in good (slightly warped) time.

The shocked shouts of annoyed passerby barely registered to her as she forcefully shoved through them. She moved fluidly, like oil spreading through water. She was fast, infecting the street with her ferocious speed and uncontrollable anger. Later she would wonder where all that rage had come from, her usual placid nature blurring into something that couldn't be contained. She was always so focused on controlling everything about her that this strange show of emotion that was so intense almost scared her. She was trained to read people, and she always had problems reading people a little too deeply. Sometimes she forgot the person she was trying to feel out, as she became so immersed in their own emotions she felt as though she were experiencing them herself. She had been trained by Clint to school her features and hide her emotions, something that blurred into her day to day life. It was always so much easier to pretend to not feel anything than feel everything.

It was safe to say she had a bit of an empathy problem, if that's even what you could call it.

For the second time that day, she decided to leave this revelation for another time. She was overthinking this, as she often did. She wasn't supposed to feel, let alone think, which was something Clint had perfected easily over the years raising Indy.

Finally, Indy slowed her rage-fueled rampage to a stop, focusing on keeping her footfalls silent as she noticed movement down an alleyway.

It was small, probably only big enough for three people to stand side by side from the walls. Flattening herself against the adjacent brick wall, she peered over the edge precariously enough for her mind to register that there were four of them. Ms. Ahn had been right when she said they were just some kids, as they were probably maybe a few years older than her.

That didn't mean they were about the same size as her, however.

Schooling her features into a pointed scowl and gritting her teeth, she rolled up her sleeves and curled her hands into fists. The moment she saw them, her mind began calculating the best course of action. They were bigger than her by a fair amount (a lot), and they seemed to be busy counting the stolen money and bickering about how much each one got. Their incessant arguing made her roll her eyes.

Her options flicked through her mind quickly, and she decided an approach that would have Clint in absolute tears. He always had been more of a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of guy.

Unfortunately for him, Indy didn't follow his example very well.

Before she could even turn the corner to get into position to attack, time froze.

Movements clicked slowly into place, blurred actions bleeding together as if they were stuck in glue. Everything was moving so fast, and yet she saw everything unfolding around her in complete clarity. The shock stayed adamantly on her face, barely able to blink as everything bled together. She had made it to the mouth of the alleyway, the thugs had started towards her, but in an instant everything had changed. She could see as clear as day, time slowing and bending around everything swirling softly around her. Confusion took its place as the shock settled, her mind running a mile a minute in comparison to the movements and actions around her.

What the actual hell was going on?

Her natural need to focus on the threat took over, and as the slow-motion action continued, that was when she first saw him.

Indy felt a shiver crawl itself up her spine, hair standing on end as if she had been struck by lightning. Her eyes never left him after they first grazed over his form, and it was as if everything that had been up in the air those first few moments can crashing down around her as his icy gaze met hers.

It was like when you were a kid and you were on a swing. It was that point when you were the absolute highest you could go, and you had that moment when everything froze around you. You were suspended against gravity, that one second seeming like hours as you closed your eyes, ready for the fall.

Indy gasped softly, as if her lungs had finally remembered what their job was.

Breathe.

And then the slow-motion stopped, time speeding back up to as it had always been, and it was as if it had just been a small glitch in a video game. The hours had been seconds, and then with a flip of the switch, it was over.

And she was left standing in an opening of an alleyway, trying to catch her breath as though she had been punched in the stomach (she had been before, it wasn't an experience she would ever hope to repeat). And though time had sped back up to its normal pace, Indy knew deep in her heart that everything had changed. Why or how, she had no idea.

The only thing she did know, was that it felt like there was no one else in the world except her and the boy that had just taken out four thieving thugs single-handedly in front of her eyes.

oooooooooo

"What…the actual…hell," she heard herself whisper softly, eyes darting around the scene as she desperately tried to make sense of it all. The moment she put her arm up to steady herself against the wall, the boy took two hurried steps towards her, concern catching on his dark face. She immediately stepped as far back as she could from him before she could become one with the unknowing pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk, her finely tuned self-preservation instincts overriding her shock of the past few seconds.

She quickly forced her surprised face into a guarded expression, still not confident enough on her feet to stop bracing herself against the wall.

Slightly dismayed by her reaction to his attempts to approach her, the boy drew in a breath as he tried to gain some much-needed patience. This was already going to be a lot harder than he had previously anticipated.

"I'm just trying to help you," he started, his voice rough from underuse.

Indy eyed him warily. He was a good head taller than her, which was impressive, considering she was over six feet tall. His hair fell into his eyes, the color of midnight. His skin was darkly pigmented, the color of warm brown sugar. His eyes never left her, the icy stare becoming slightly unnerving to Indy. She tried to stifle a shiver.

Instead, she scrunched up her face and hardened her features. "I don't need any help, thank you very much. I had this whole situation under control until you decided to swoop in," she said accusingly. She was way to emotionally frustrated to deal with some wayward do-gooder in the form of some self-righteous kid that couldn't have been that much older than her. "I can take care of myself just fine," she added defensively. She needed to finish this conversation, retrieve Ms. Ahn's money and get back to work.

The boy let a small smirk slide itself across his face, a cocky look shadowing his intense gaze. "I'm quite sure you would have had a very successful time with these guys. What was your plan, exactly?" Though he easily shifted from his alert posture from earlier into this air of easy confidence, his eyes never left hers. It made her even more pissed off.

"I could ask you the same thing," she said, raising her voice only slightly. Her annoyance had gotten her solidly back on her feet, wavering only slightly, but she caught his quick glance at her feet. He looked like he was ready to catch her should she fall. Oh man, this guy really didn't know who he was dealing with.

She stomped closer to him, hands firmly on her hips as she waited for an answer. His gaze flickered away from her for a fraction of a second, his unease washing over her on account of her not having her usual walls up because of her slip into rage from earlier. Her eyes widened, things starting to click into place as the boy crossed his arms in a defensive position.

"You're the one that's been following me, aren't you?" She had him now, his confident smirk sliding into a thin line. He was struggling with an answer, options flickering through his head. The silence was answer enough for Indy, however.

"Oh my god, you are," she cried, anger flaring back into her gaze as the shock of the realization melted away. "What the hell, dude? I mean, it's pretty common knowledge that stalking people is a federal offense!" The boy seemed to get his voice back after that comment, shock muffling his uneasy expression.

"I was not stalking you, Indy!" He realized his mistake seconds too late, Indy's face contorting into anger as she took one more threatening step towards him

"How in the hell do you know my name?" She snapped softly, anger reverberating around each word. This was turning out to be a really, really bad day.

The boy struggled for a proper answer, before he seemed to settle on something as he schooled his features and glared down at her past his sharp nose.

"I don't know."

oooooooooo

AN: And this is where the fun begins, dear readers. thanks for reading, and please follow, favorite and review!


	7. Chapter 7: In Black

Chapter VII

In Black

Indy hadn't realized how impossibly cold it was until then.

Had it always been this frigid that day? Why was it that now, at this exact moment, she was feeling as though icy fingers were crawling their way up her spine, clawing at her scalp and pulling harshly against her face? Had the winter wind picked up? Was it her lack of actual cold-weather clothes, considering the fact that she always opted for Clint's worn out jacket instead of a more practical coat?

Looking into this strange boy's icy eyes was the only answer she ever got.

Pulling herself together so fast it made the boy's head spin, she quickly calculated her next move and executed her final actions.

"Look, I don't have time for you or your ridiculous fascination with me. Thanks for 'helping' me out back there, I'm going back to work, and I swear to all that is holy if I ever see you around again I will call the cops and kick your ass myself," she stated angrily, done with him and the rest of this day. She tried to think back to where it had all gone wrong. Was this the universe trying to mess with her? Maybe it was some form of karma she was overdue on. Whatever it was she wasn't in the mood to deal with it.

She had barely taken a step in the other direction before she felt a hand on her arm.

It took every fiber of her being not to snap it instantly.

"Wait, don't you want to know how I know your name? Why I've been following you?" Indy had completely frozen in his grasp, wondering why she hadn't turned around and punched him in the face yet. Maybe she was gaining some more of that self-control Clint said she had none of.

"Listen asshole, you probably know my name because you overheard Clint or someone say it while you've been watching me. And you've been following me because you're some sick bastard that has nothing else to do than follow girls around to work. Now let go of me before I physically make you forget why you were following me in the first place," she practically growled the last part, and the boy retaliated by taking his had off her like he had been burned. She knew it wasn't because of her threat, however, which made her even more confused.

Instead of sticking around to pick this guy's brain, Indy swiftly walked out of the alleyway with as much grace and confidence that she could muster after almost dying in a New York alley.

She didn't even look back.

oooooooooo

Clint wasn't at the apartment when Indy got off work that night.

She didn't know what to except. Or what she wanted to expect.

She really was an emotional disaster today.

Slamming the door leading to their floor roughly, she threw off her (Clint's) jacket and made a beeline to the roof stairs, pounding into the floor a little more forcefully than she should have. She didn't let herself breathe until she had gotten herself fully on the rooftop, letting the frigid night air burn her lungs and sting her face. Of course, the roof of her apartment had always been a place where she could get away and clear her head. But today, she felt like she needed it even more than usual.

Her head was buzzing, feelings and thoughts exploding in her mind like fireworks. Even after she had taken lungful after lungful of cool city air, she still couldn't shake the rush of emotions she had been plagued with since earlier that day.

Of course, all of this had to center around that strange boy that had eyes of ice and a smile that rivaled that of the cheshire cat from Wonderland.

She sensed him looming behind her before she actually saw him.

Of course, that certain strange boy had to make an appearance on her own roof.

She just couldn't win today.

"I warned you," she mumbled into her sweatshirt with a sigh. Unfurling herself from her crouched position on the edge of the roof, she stood slowly. With one last intake of chilling night air, she turned and swiftly threw a punch straight to his face. It was a bit of a stretch for her, but it found its mark on his thinly pointed nose.

He recoiled back only slightly, the punch taking him by less surprise than Indy had hoped, and it hadn't done nearly as much damage as she had wanted it to. Instead of hunching over in pain, he swiftly retaliated by blocking her next strike to the jaw and grabbing her leg as she threw a well-placed kick. For a millisecond she thought he was going to let her go.

Well, he did.

On the ground.

She fell back onto the concrete roof with a gasp she hadn't managed to stifle, closing her eyes as she winced once she caught her breath.

"Jesus fu-…what the hell," she whispered, pulling herself off the ground. He extended his dark hand towards her in an act of peace, but she harshly batted it away and made her way to her feet angrily.

He smirked only slightly. "Well, when someone attempts to break your nose, I think a little self-defense is to be expected," he replied, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. She may not have broken it, but her punch was certainly going to leave a mark. She would have smiled at the thought if she wasn't so winded.

Instead of validating his response, she rolled her eyes in annoyance as she tried to even out her breathing. "I told you not to follow me anymore. Can't you get that through your thick skull? I'm not interested in you or your stupid 'amnesia' card or whatever. I don't care, just get the hell away from me," she demanded angrily, the past events seeming to take a toll on her. She was exhausted but she didn't need this creep to know that. "Now will you get off my roof?"

Seemingly unfazed by her immense hatred towards him and their present situation, he took a few moments to simply stare back at her. Indy briefly wondered it the kid ever blinked. They were a good five feet away from each other, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they would never be far away enough from each other. This guy had no sense of personal space when it came to eye contact.

"Not until you hear me out," he finally stated, smirk turned down into a thin, focused line. He looked a lot older like that, Indy noticed shamelessly.

Though she honestly didn't have time for this (Clint was bound to show up any minute), she decided she had had enough fighting today. She could only do so much, though she hated coming to terms with that. Feeling powerless was not a feeling she was comfortable with. Sighing heavily, she moved back to her previous position on the edge of the roof, staring blankly into the city.

"Sure. Fine. Whatever. Like I can stop you, anyway," she huffed into her sweatshirt.

Though Indy couldn't see it, the boy shifted uncomfortably at her last statement.

He didn't move from his current position, continuing to stand solidly at the center of the roof. He let the silence swirl around them, content with the lullaby of the city, still buzzing from the day well into the night. It was almost soothing in a way to the boy, since he usually never ventured into the city until a few months prior. It wasn't particularly…safe for him to do so.

But then, everything changed.

And he didn't have a damn clue why.

"I'm, uh, my name is Cairo," he broke the silence, voice creaking in the breeze. Indy didn't turn to face him or even look at him, just snorted humorlessly in reply.

"What, you don't have a last name or something?" She wasn't known for being bitter, but this Cairo guy was really bringing out an uncharted part of her. She wasn't sure if she didn't like that or not, but it scared her enough to make it worry at her thoughts uncomfortably.

"Well, as far as I know, it's Chesterfield," he mumbled, not quite sure of himself. He wanted so desperately to move closer to her, to sit on the edge of the roof and stare into the movement of the city. But he didn't. He promised himself he wouldn't get too close. He didn't need anything to take a turn. Not again.

"As far as you know? What's that supposed to mean?" She still refused to look at him, instead shifting her position from crouched over the edge to leaning back on her hands with her legs dangling over the edge. If this kid was going to be annoying her the rest of the night, she might as well make herself comfortable.

"I..uh, don't exactly have a given last name. Chesterfield's where I'm from. The, uh, Chesterfield Orphanage," he stumbled over his words, almost caving in on himself. Indy would have laughed if she could have seen him, his tall form hunching together. He was so imposing and intimidating, when in reality he was as scared of himself as others were.

"An orphan, huh? Well join the club, it seems to be getting bigger everywhere," she stated loudly to absolutely nothing, a bitter smile stretched over her uncaring features. Cairo hated how cynical and pessimistic she sounded, but he just brushed it off as her usual brutally honest persona. "Where'd 'Cairo' come from?"

"Oh. Well we only ever had one book at the orphanage. It was an atlas of Africa. We all picked our names from the places on there, since we weren't exactly given proper ones." He didn't know why he told her this, mostly because he had never told anyone this before. But also because it was so easy.

Though neither of them knew it, both parties were afraid of the other.

And they had no idea why.

Cairo couldn't stand this divulgence into his past much longer. "What kind of a name is Indy anyway?"

"Shouldn't you know?" This time she turned to him, spiteful green eyes meeting guarded icy ones. Her words were nothing short than a blow to him, even though he was perfectly aware that he didn't except her to trust him coming into this. Patience was going to have to be the way to go.

"Just because I know a part of your name doesn't mean I know everything about you. I don't even know how I know that part alone," he sighed exasperatedly. Expected or not, her standoffish nature and closed attitude were really starting to get under his skin.

She didn't speak for a moment, instead retreating back into her closed in position on the roof's edge from earlier. "It's Indigo, actually. Indigo Budapest Barton. Clint really likes Indiana Jones, but he had this thing with the color indigo, said it was something with my mom. Now he can just call me Indy and it fits pretty well. He never explained the Budapest, he would just smile when I asked him about it and he'd just tell me it was a great story. There, since you were so gracious to explain your etymology," she sniffed, with an air of forced nonchalance wrapped tightly around her.

Cairo mulled over her explanation, liking how the name fit in his head like it belonged there. But there were still too many blank spaces, too many unanswered questions and unexplained occurrences that stretched between the two people.

He supposed that he could find out more of these things later, deciding that today had uncovered enough to ponder. He tried not to think about the fact that now he felt like he had more questions than answers. Thus was the story of Cairo Chesterfield's so-called life.

He sighed, letting the pent-up air in his lungs add to the winter breeze, and started quietly towards the curled-up Indy. He perched himself softly beside her, careful to let him be at least a good arm's length away from her. He felt like they both might need a little space, even though all he wanted to do was be as close to her as he possibly could.

And so they sat in silence, staring out into the lights contrasted against the black night, feeling the cold gnaw at their fingers and noses, and let the sound of the city lull them into a daze as they tried not to think about how absolutely terrified they were.

Of each other or themselves was yet to be foreseen.

oooooooooo

AN: So, so, so sorry this is late! Bit of a busy last couple of weeks to be perfectly honest. Sorry this isn't very exciting compared to the last chapter, i just needed to set up a few things and not rush into introductions. And just an update, as I'm seeing how slowly this story is progressing, I hope you're in it for the long hull! Thanks for reading, and please follow, favorite and review!


	8. Chapter 8: When the Stars Come Back

Chapter VIII

When the Stars Come Back

Indy woke that morning shivering.

The harsh light of morning shone with great resilience through her window, seeping into her vision and keeping her out of her shroud of sleep. She groaned irritably, pushing her hair out of her face as she propped herself up.

That was about the time that she remembered that she couldn't remember anything at all.

The past grogginess she had been sporting due to just waking up disappeared in an instant as she went into survival mode. She breezed through her room, checking under her bed and behind her shower curtain hurriedly. The only sign that anyone had been there was her open window, the cold wind whistling into her room. Though it wasn't much to go off of, she was pretty sure she knew who had been here because of it. She let herself breathe, and briefly entertained the thought that she was never going to get rid of Cairo Chesterfield. Wether or not she was displeased with this idea was yet to be discovered, apparently.

She checked herself over carelessly, very happy to find herself in the clothes she had been wearing while she had been on the roof. He hadn't even taken her boots off for her. She snorted as a small smile danced across her face. Taking wary steps towards the window, she poked her head out curiously, greeted only by the honking of taxis and white noise of chattering passerby. She didn't really know what she had been expecting.

Sighing heavily, she lowered her window and took a moment to take in how still the room was because of it. Even though the city sounds outside were only muted, Indy found it uncomfortably quiet, almost like when you're walking through a room and you know there's something off and all it is is that the floor is unevenly slanted sideways. It wasn't a considerable change, but it was enough to be noticed.

Shuffling out into the hallway lazily, she just about fell over when she saw the time. It took her an instant to remember it was Sunday.

Relaxing with a sigh into a kitchen chair, she assumed Clint still wasn't back yet. It wasn't exactly that unusual for Clint to leave for a few days every once and a while. She knew he had complete faith in her abilities. It wasn't that he was uncaring, for even Indy had no idea for how deeply his love for her went. It was simply that he trusted Indy, and with that trust he treated her as someone who deserved it.

That was enough for her.

She snatched a lone piece of toast and threw herself down on the not-so fabulously antiqued couch in the living room. She had no idea what she wanted to do today.

Clint was probably going to be gone most of the day for something or other, probably another commission. She couldn't count on him making an appearance anytime soon.

She could wander around the back streets of NYC and search for Rozy if she had been working today, but she thought it was a little early for that. She usually didn't work until the shroud of night was upon them. She was very dramatic like that.

She could sneak into the theatre and mess around on the stage before anyone came in for rehearsals for tonight's show. It would be kind of fun, considering she only usually went into the NYCB theatre from the rafters. It would be kind go nice to see everything from a different perspective.

Running a hand through her dark hair, she pushed herself off the couch and wandered back to her room. Though she wasn't a fashionista by any stretch of the imagination, she was pretty sure it was a bit of a social faux pas to where the same clothes two days in a row.

She threw off her old clothing with little care, tossing them into some corner of her room she wasn't likely to clean out any time soon. She put on an old band t-shirt and some jeans with some strangely placed holes courtesy of running from the cops on multiple occasions. She considered wearing Clint's coat again, but she opted instead for one of her oversized sweatshirts she found at a local thrift shop. She rarely ever cared about what she looked like, it was always about how she felt. She was never one to pick style over comfort, to be perfectly honest. Didn't seem like there was much of a point, it didn't matter anyway.

Indy tugged on her favorite pair of scratched boots, lacing them up quickly. If she wanted to make it to the theatre before the ballerinas arrived for rehearsal, she was going to have to get there by roof. She made her way to the rooftop stairs, shoving her hands into her sweatshirt pockets. The winter wind whipped at her face, pieces of hair that hadn't been caught by her messily done ponytail moving with the breeze softly. She took in a breath of cool air, letting it fill her lungs as she started towards the edge.

She didn't let the breath go however, suddenly aware of someone else. She would have been alarmed if she hadn't already been excepting another presence on the roof. She turned around, greeted by a slightly smiling Cairo Chesterfield.

He looked exactly like he had last night, windswept hair brushing against his piercing crystal eyes, warm skin practically glowing at her entrance.

"Good morning, Indy," he said smoothly, his happiness at seeing her thinly veiled through his forced nonchalance. She rolled her eyes fondly, still a little sore about him dropping her last night. She still wasn't very familiar with the idea of losing, and he seemed to be keen on winning.

She turned on her heel back towards the edge, half expecting him to give up and leave her be. But, as was previously mentioned, he was keen on winning.

"Where are you going?" She could feel him falling into step behind her, trying to catch up with her hurried pace.

She sighed in lighthearted irritation. "To the NYCB."

"You dance? That's cool," he said, trying to sound like he didn't care as he held back a smile threatening to explode across the length of his dark face.

"No I don't dance, I just like, uh, watching the dances, I guess," she stumbled over her words, not really wanting to explain everything to make it more clear to him. Like he deserved anything from her.

She was nearing the edge of the roof, taking a running step towards it when she was, once again, caught by a strong hand on her arm. Her self control was really starting to dwindle with this guy.

"What are you doing?" When she turned to face him, he had such a strong, unshielded look of concern on his face it was like a punch to the gut. Sure, Clint cared about her, but he made sure not to make a big show of it. It just wasn't what he did, and it usually wasn't what she did. It was just the way they were, an unspoken love for each other that they knew existed but didn't acknowledge.

This kid had just met her, and already he was looking so deeply into her with such raw caring that she didn't know what to make of it.

She screwed up her features, giving him a threatening glare as she roughly shrugged off his hand. "I told you, I'm going to the NYCB. Do you have a hearing problem as well as a basic comprehension and social interaction one as well?" She turned away from him quickly enough so he couldn't make to stop her again, and made a running leap as she tucked and rolled to the ground on the adjacent roof. Standing up as she brushed herself off, she glanced back at his shocked face. She smirked. "See?"

Schooling his features, he mirrored her actions, and instead landed with inhuman grace on his feet next to where she stood.

Now it was his turn to let a knowing smirk slip across his features. "I do."

A humored spark flickered across her features before she turned away from him. Maybe this would be fun.

"Alright then. I guess the game is on, dear Watson," she smiled devilishly, darting forward and leaping onto a lower roof, catching the fire escape haphazardly.

It took Cairo a moment to wrap his head around what she was suggesting, a wicked grin matching hers spreading over his face like wildfire. He sprinted towards her, his long strides in time with hers. He had a lot more grace and power behind him, but what she lacked in expertise she made up in speed and agility.

They were racing each other over rooftops like children, laughing in the frigid air and smiling against the wind. It was like lightning, happy and excited and infectious. He was infectious. His laugh, his cheshire-cat smile, his clever wit. He was smart and strong and fast, everything she was. It wasn't like when she was playing chess or training with Clint, going through the motions and expecting the next move. This was different, this was a change, this was maddeningly challenging. Indy was dealing with someone who knew the difference between his queen and his king and knew when to offend and when to defend. This was truly a match to behold, a challenger that was finally worthy.

This was definitely going to be a lot of fun.

She glanced back at him, grinning insanely big. Her smile faltered, seeing he wasn't behind her. Had he fallen back? Given up? She was suddenly very upset, her energy and excitement turning into worried anxiety. It was like that one time she had almost fallen off their roof when she was five, too curious for her own good. She remembered how everything inside of her shifted, moving fast as the world around her slowed down. She briefly reflected on the first time she had seen Cairo, the feeling so similar it scared her.

Had he left her?

"Hey, slow poke."

She whipped her head forward so fast he worried that she had snapped her neck.

He was a roof ahead of her running backwards as he gave her a cheeky salute. Her smile came back in an instant, returning as quickly as it had left. She let out an unbridled laugh of relief, unusually happy because of this boy's presence.

A nagging thought continued to claw at her mind, shoved into a corner to deal with later. Why was she so concerned about him? She had known him for less than twenty four hours and she already felt so afraid when she thought he had abandoned her. She was sure this wasn't healthy.

She would have mulled over this thought more if she hadn't been blinded by how unnaturally happy she was, and put the poisonous idea behind her to deal with more extensively at a later time.

She must have been very blind, because the next minute she was falling, but this time it wasn't metaphorically. She was, quite literally, falling. Or at least, had been falling.

She felt two arms tightening around her as she practically flew off a roof edge, staring blankly towards the faint outlines of cars and people over a hundred feet below her.

This was all starting to become an increasingly annoying common occurrence.

He pulled her back, gently placing her behind him. How had he caught her that fast? How had he caught her at all? She knew she wasn't exactly the smallest girl in New York, and even Clint couldn't pull a full-body throw on her anymore. She calculated that his thin frame shouldn't have been able to catch her that quickly and pull her up to the roof that fast.

She needed to stop overthinking everything, it's what got her nearly to her death in the first place.

"Getting a little ahead of ourselves, are we?" Though she knew he was joking, the adrenaline-rushed worry remained in his eyes. He must have been really scared when she fell. Why was he so scared? Why was he so worried? Why was she so concerned about him being so worried and scared for her?

If she knew one thing, it was that she was going to have one hell of a headache when she got home.

"Guess so," she breathed, trying to calm herself down as she ran another shaking hand through her wind-swept hair. She needed to come down from her survival-adrenaline rush as well. "Hey, we're here."

She nodded swiftly, dropping to her knees as she searched for her usual entrance. Once she had found it, she called out dejectedly to Cairo. "Uh, I don't know how well you're going to fit in here."

He snorted in reply. "I think I'll be fine."

Rolling her eyes, she slipped through the vent and dropped onto the catwalk directly below her. She heard a thud signaling her of Cairo's presence, and continued to the stairs leading to the wings of the stage.

"Man, this is cool. I've never been in here before," he whispered softly behind her, gazing down towards the stage cast in shadow.

"You've never been to the NYCB? Shame, really," she said in mockingly, holding a door open for him to the stage.

"Thank you, m'lady," he tipped his invisible hat as she bowed slightly, a goofy smile never leaving her eyes.

"Of course, good sir," she quipped back.

They both held back an awed gasp as they made it on to the stage.

It was absolutely spectacular, the audience spreading around them as they took in the lights and the seats and the enormity of it all. It was all washed in darkness, the only light shining in through the natural light through the curtained windows. It was silent other than their feather-light footsteps on the stage. They just stood there, not wanting to break the wonderful silence of the room as they took it all in.

"To be honest, I've never been in here, either," she breathed quietly, "I've never had the courage to stray from the catwalks." Her whispers were barely audible, but Cairo caught every word.

"Well then, m'lady, can I have this dance?" His rich voice moved through the room effortlessly, as if it belonged there. She almost laughed at him.

"One: this is a place of ballet, not waltzing. Two: I don't dance," she crossed her arms defiantly, trying to pull a serious face but not succeeding in banishing the smile from her eyes.

"One: I don't care, and two: I still don't care," he retorted, and it took everything in Indy not to punch that self-satisfied smirk off his stupid face.

"There's not even any music, moron," she tried. She had an idea that she wasn't going to be winning this argument.

"Yes there is," he smirked as he unraveled her crossed arms gently, taking her hands in his. She still didn't know why she didn't punch him for just touching her right then and there on that stage, but for the strangest reason she almost felt comfortable with him, like it was supposed to be like this or something, as stupid as it sounded. He then started humming, a tune Indy knew but couldn't quite remember the words. He moved as she still stood like a statue, not moving an inch with him.

"Oh, come on Indy. We're in a place of dance, we can't just not dance," he said with fake exasperation as he continued to try to make her move in time with him.

"What was that you said about 'not caring' earlier?" She wasn't going to let him win easily. He laughed, the sweet sound reverberating around the giant room.

"You are just too smart for me, Ms. Barton," he smiled, icy eyes trained on hers.

She sighed, cracking a small smile as she started to slowly mimic his motions across the stage. She had never really danced with someone else before, it wasn't like Clint was going to teach her considering the fact that it wasn't exactly needed to survive.

That being said, she really sucked at dancing.

"You really suck at dancing," Cairo stopped humming briefly, holding back a laugh threatening to escape his goofy grin.

"Shut up, asshole," she sneered, focusing intently on trying to step on his foot. He yelped, and now it was her turn to hold back a laugh.

Soon enough, they fell into a rhythm across the stage, Indy slowly picking up how it was supposed to work. She had always been a fast learner. Cairo moved with such grace and poise she didn't know how it fit him, looking like some impoverished kid coming off the streets. He was almost regal, even with his jokes and easy humor. Indy didn't know what to make of him. She had always been a people person, she was trained to be so, but Cairo was turning out to be one difficult puzzle to solve.

He looked down at her then, cool ice meeting lively moss as their eyes met. They were both smiling in the shadowed theatre, light from the windows beaming down lazily at them. She tried not to think as they moved together, focusing on nothing at all.

But of course, the great Indigo Budapest Barton just couldn't help herself.

"I just remembered that song, the one you've been humming. It was bothering me, not knowing it," she gasped happily. Cairo gave her a humored eye roll as it all dawned on her.

"You are my sunshine," she said triumphantly. He almost seemed sad when she said that, his smile faltering only slightly. She must have not seen it.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away," she sang softly as if in a daze, struggling to remember the words as her voice warbled slightly. She glanced back up at him once she finished, ridiculous smile faded with only a questioning gaze to take its place. He looked so sad, an expression similar to the one Clint wore when she asked about her mother. It was so pained and raw she had to remember to breathe, not being used to such open displays of emotion. It was so strange, this moment and everything that had happened prior to it. Why was everything so different, why now? So many questions swirled wildly around her head she didn't even notice that they had stopped moving, hands still clasped together.

She broke one of her hands away, and slowly moved it towards his face. She was hesitant, moving as if she were in a daze. It was like she was underwater, her movements slow and weighed down. She was floating, trying desperately to remember something she wasn't sure she had ever experienced. Her face scrunched up in concentration, trying not to think as her hand neared his face.

And then it all shattered.

"I, uh, I should…go," he whispered hurriedly, breaking apart from her so fast she stood there for a moment on the stage before she realized he was gone.

She stayed there on the stage, face cast in shadow as she let her hand fall back into place against her sides. She reflected back on what had just happened, wondering if she had done something.

She brought her hand up, running the other over it curiously. It was cold. It had been so cold, the closer she got to his face. His eyes had flashed, the ice melting into something different entirely. What it was she had no idea.

But it couldn't have been good.

oooooooooo

AN: Early chapter for you, and an early chapter for you, and an early chapter for everybody! Whew this chapter was a long one to write. I'm sorry this is so fluffy, it'll be more legit next time. I know this all looks weird at the moment, but it'll make sense soon I promise! Thanks for reading, and please please please follow, favorite and review!

DISCLAIMER: I haven't been putting these on all my chapters, but this is just a reminder that I don't own any Marvel characters. This story is mine as well as my original characters. This is true for all of my chapters, past and future. Thank you.


	9. Chapter 9: Collision Course

Chapter IX

Collision Course

Indy didn't see Cairo Chesterfield the rest of the day.

She didn't see him the next day.

Or the day after that.

Or the week after that.

The more unsettling point was, she didn't feel him.

The strange unease that had plagued her the past weeks was gone, rightfully banished from the recesses of her mind. Seeing him was less of a problem. Feeling him was.

It was like he had vanished. She always knew he was with her, in a weird, sort-of-stalker-ish way. She tried not to think about it, as her situation was strange enough all the way around. She had gotten comfortable with his presence, in an odd way. To be without his watchful gaze always on her in some shape or form was as strange as it had been when she first realized he was constantly following her. It was like when you lost your first tooth. It felt foreign, having that space once so full now empty. But you got used to it, even more surprised when you discovered a new one was taking its place soon enough.

She tried to let her jumble of worried thoughts sort themselves out, but as the days passed and grew into a week, her mental state was becoming as much of a mess as her train of thought was.

She found herself whipping her head around streets, straining against the darkness of night to catch a glimpse of him, just to reassure her. Of what, exactly, she had no idea.

She had been going out at night a lot more recently than usual. She wasn't sure she was completely conscious of this, but it happened nonetheless. Clint had come back home that night, trudging in tiredly with sagging shoulders and making a beeline for the fridge, popping open a beer. The commission must not have gone as planned. She had thought about going in to talk to him, but she knew better than to comfort him when he was in his depressed state. When he got into one of his moods he didn't want to talk to her. He wasn't a "feelings" kind of guy, and he'd just spend the night drinking and staring blankly at the ceiling. His eyes turned to glass, unmoving except for his shallow breathing, face blank with an unreadable expression. He didn't want to talk. He never really did. She learned not to ask questions.

She played with the idea of going onto the roof again, but she wasn't really sure if she wanted to go up there without him. The musing passed through her head before she could stop it. She visibly cringed.

Instead she ventured out into the hallway, making her way onto the almost empty street. Their neck of the woods was usually about deserted around this time of night. No one really liked the back roads of New York City after dark. Indy didn't really mind, though it was more of a disarming lack of caring and self-preservation.

Exactly a week after she had last seen Cairo Chesterfield, she had been taking her newly reoccurring walk around her block. The street lights had flickered lazily, their dusty glare illuminating the corners of sidewalks and crumbling roads. She breathed against the winter wind, humming languidly into her scarf. She didn't realize what tune she had been humming until she stepped in front of an alleyway cast in shadow, foreign arms pulling her roughly into the darkness.

"Hey there, Indiana."

Her blow to her attacker's abdomen was quickly halted when she heard the feminine voice, smile evident in her words even in the darkness. Indy let out an annoyed sigh.

"Jesus, Rozy, I was about to break one of your ribs," she whispered harshly as she turned towards her would-be attacker. She just smirked haughtily in return as she crossed her arms smudged with spray paint over her chest.

"I don't think you'd have the guts, your elbows aren't nearly as deadly enough," she laughed, eyebrow raised. She never believed all of Indy's tales of intensive combat training. She just thought she wanted to look more like a badass, considering how harmless she looked, saved for her ridiculous towering stature.

Indy rolled her eyes. She wasn't in the mood to play games at the moment, even though it was nice to see Rozy again. She worried about her, hoping the next she heard from her wouldn't be from a pay phone asking for bail money. She had such a way of getting herself in extensive amounts of trouble. "What is it that you want, considering you practically dragged me into this alley and disrupted my lovely evening walk."

"Oh yeah. Well, I've been working on this project near the park, you know, real big, and I had been noticing your 'lovely evening walks' you've adopted as of late. It's a bit of an odd habit of you to pick up to be honest. Is everything…okay, considering the fact you've been walking around NYC like a freaking zombie this week?" Rozy's arms stayed firmly crossed against her chest, head cocked inquisitively to the side with a knowing expression.

Indy wasn't really expecting that, her show of caring out of place to her. She was a little uneasy towards her thoughtfulness towards her behavior. It was weird to have someone openly care about her well-being like that.

"I, uh, don't know. Just been…thinking a lot, I guess," she retorted lamely, tripping over her explanation. She looked away, training her eyes on a broken lamp post. She heard Rozy snort.

"Cut the crap, Indiana. You and I know something's been up with you. You can either tell me now or we can wait until you suffer the consequences of not coming to the great Rozemin Jafari for advice on what appears to be a very taxing situation," she huffed out patiently, still wearing her amused smirk.

"It's not a big deal, honestly. I don't even know what it is. Everything's been so," she paused, sparing a glance at her closest thing to a friend, "strange." The silence stretched between them, Indy struggling awkwardly under it as Rozy's face started to light up in recognition.

"It's a boy. Totally called it," she declared infuriatingly. Indy sighed heavily in frustration. She really didn't want to spend the night explaining her particularly confusing predicament to Rozy, considering she didn't even understand it fully herself. The questions were never-ending in her mind, the only way to deal with them was to keep them at bay for another time to ponder over.

"Sure, Rozy. It's totally a boy," she replied in submission. Rozy caught her reluctance easily, analyzing her annoyed state. She pulled back thoughtfully.

"Alright. You may not want to talk to me about it now, but you will. I have a feeling it's going to get a lot worse if it's got you wandering the streets of NYC at night already," she said slyly, stretching a hand up to ruffle Indy's hair, ignoring the fact she was a full foot taller than her.

"Whatever," Indy brushed her off, continuing out of the alley on her path down the shadowed street.

"Later, 'sunshine'," she heard Rozy call over her shoulder.

Indy faltered as a chill ran over her. She spun on her heel, rushing back into the dark alley, questions about falling off her tongue.

They never made their way out of her mouth, because Rozemin Jafari was gone.

oooooooooo

She didn't take a walk the next night.

After she knew Clint was passed out on their decaying couch, Indy crept her way up the stairway to the rooftop. She knew Clint heard everything, even in sleep, but she was well aware she was the only one who rivaled his skill of going unnoticed. She tried not to use it against him however, her respect for his trust he gave her outweighing her need to go unseen.

It was unnaturally still for a winter night in the city. The sounds of cars and people of the night were drowned out, everything sounding like she was underwater. She wasn't surprised to see him tipped precariously over the roof, toes just dancing along the ledge.

"About time you decided to show up."

He didn't move to look at her, just merely turned his head upwards. He looked like he was searching for something, cold eyes traveling desperately against the colorless sky.

"There's no stars here," he said, face contorting in concentration as he continued to sweep his gaze across the horizon. She quietly moved to his side, still cautious, as she always was. She was so cautious.

"Yeah, there's stars here. We just can't see them, I guess. Has to do with all the damn lights we have in the city, or some shit like that," she responded carelessly. He was so strange.

He turned his head sideways to look at her, hair sweeping over his icy eyes. It was then she realized how tired he was. His always rigid posture was curved, his arms shifting inwards as he shoved his hands in his jean pockets. His usually sharp eyes were tired, the chilling ice weak against the heat of his skin. Shadows were cast around his face, his usual wolfish features seeming slightly more hollow. She was filled with unease as he tried to flash her one of his confident smirks, but all it turned out to be was a small smile that wilted along the edges as his eyes gave way to sadness.

"You didn't come here to talk about stars, did you?" He sighed, turning back to the sky. He never left her soft gaze, arms wrapping around herself in the still cold of the night. He sighed.

"You're too smart for me, Miss. Barton," he stopped trying to smile, just kept his longing look behind his eyes as it gave way to defeat. He paused. He breathed. Everything he did was calculated.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here this past week. I, uh, had to take care of some things. I didn't mean to leave for that long," he gave himself time to breathe, Indy knowing full well he didn't know how much she had missed and worried about him. She didn't say anything at all as he continued to stare at the endless sky. A worried look passed his face, almost melting into sadness and what seemed to be regret before he schooled his features to something more attainable. "It's probably not best that I stay around you much more. I don't think…I know it's not…good for, uh, you," he winced slightly, but Indy was fast enough to catch it. She raised her eyebrow, shooting him an endearing look.

"And this is coming from the guy who was relentlessly stalking me for a week?" She smiled in spite of herself. He was too much fun to make fun of, and his seriousness was foreign to her. He gave her a look.

"I was not- Indy this is important," he said exasperatedly. "I mean it. I don't think it's good for you and me to be hanging around each other anymore."

Her smile faded, melting into confusion. "What are you talking about? We literally just met a week ago, and you're already bored of me?" She had tried to be teasing, but she worried it came off as desperate. Was she desperate?

"It's not that, you could never be boring," he couldn't help but smile as he whispered his reply. "I don't think you deserve to deal with me, I guess. That sounds wrong," he sighed, running a hand through his black hair.

"Didn't you think we were 'connected' or some shit weeks ago, and now you're ready to leave? What made you change your mind?" She was getting tired of his insolence, watching him dance around the real problem was becoming infuriating. He was hiding something from her, she could see it in the twitch of his long nose as he tried to think, the way his hands shook as he ran his hand through his bangs.

"We are, I know we are," he cried. "But you don't get it, Indy. I don't…I can't let us be connected," he whispered, face pained as he stared down at her. "This is a path I don't want you to have to take. Whoever or whatever I am isn't good, I'm not good. I don't know why or how but I know I am. And whatever you have to do with it I don't want you a part of." He stood firmly, face back into the stony position it had been earlier.

She looked back up at him blankly, calculating his reserved expression. She mulled over his response thoroughly, trying to make sense of it all. But there was none to make. "You are making no sense at all, you know that, right?" He turned away from her in frustration, trying desperately to keep his resolve as he remembered to breathe. She scrunched up her face in determination. She wasn't going to let him go like this, not without a fight.

"Listen, Cairo Chesterfield. This isn't some god damn _Twilight _novel or some shit like that. You can't pull the whole 'I'm dangerous and a menace to society so I'm going to never talk to you again to protect you from myself and my unknown past', at least not on me. Just because you don't know who you are doesn't mean you're bad, I don't care what your spidey-senses or whatever are telling you," she paused mid-rant, closing her eyes as she struggled to continue. "Clint always told me that you are who you choose to be. It doesn't matter where I came from or what I did or who my mom was. What matters is who I want to be, Cairo." He dipped his head as she continued on to his back, the image wavering slightly in her clouded vision. "Good isn't something that we are. It's something that we do."

She let the silence stretch between them, the heated conversation settling as she tried to remember how they had gotten to this point so quickly. He didn't say anything as he walked down her fire escape. He looked up once as he gripped the railing, foot hovering over the first step. His eyes were the same icy blue, boring through her as it filled her heavy heart. They were melting, but not the same way they had before in the theatre. It threatened to spill over his face, mirroring her.

That was as close to a goodbye she ever got.

oooooooooo

AN: Yay! I apologize that this was posted a little later than I had previously hoped. I hope you caught a few of those borrowed quotes and references. It might feel like this is going fast but the actual main plot is yet to be revealed if you can believe it, so please hang on! Thanks for reading, and please follow, favorite and review!


	10. Chapter 10: Time Again (Again)

Chapter X

Time Again (Again)

The stillness of the night rested heavily against her shoulders, pushing against her thin frame as gravity forced itself on her. Everything was so quiet, so still. So indifferent.

Indy was briefly reminded of the first time she saw him, time slowing as the world around her froze. It was as silent and still then as it was now, but this time the clock kept ticking. The feeling of dazed euphoria was absent, the flicker in her chest that had been like a spark was no where to be found. The wonder and the amazement and hope that had filled her when she met him had been replaced by sadness. She felt completely alone. She didn't know why.

Though the normally howling wind was still, a chill still ran down her spine as she began shivering relentlessly. Nothing felt right anymore. Everything had been fine once upon a time.

She liked to think that, at least. Subconsciously, she knew nothing had ever been fine. It was normal for Clint and her to think they were normal. As if their debt, crumbling apartment, lack of income and never-ending questions could dissipate into financial stability and a feeling of physical safety.

Even with all that uncertainty and lack of normality, it had always been okay in the end, just her and Clint. They were more of partners than they were family. They relied on each other, when it was called for and when it wasn't. That was alright with her, she had given up on the family life style a while ago. Not much use worrying about it if you don't have a family to begin with. Clint was enough, and he always would be.

But then this kid crashed into her life. Everything had shifted, her outlook changing as everything she knew blurred together until nothing seemed clear to her anymore. All these questions and unanswered holes in her life suddenly surfaced, and she wished she could just go back to the way things were.

She hunched in on herself in the stillness, it weighing against her mercilessly as she silently let herself cry.

She never cried. She was almost positive no one had ever seen her cry. On that very rare occasion she did, however, she made sure no one saw. It was bad enough that she was so conscious of how weak she was, she didn't need anyone else knowing it.

She didn't know why everything had suddenly changed, but she knew it had to do with Cairo Chesterfield. He was right when he said they were connected somehow. She could feel it from the moment she saw him, and even sometime before that. The way time bent around him the way it had, the way his eyes made her heart freeze up almost painfully, the way he knew her name and said it like that was the way it was meant to be spoken. It was one hole in herself that had finally been filled. They fit together in such a strange and unexpected way, but it felt as right as the sun and the moon. They were meant to be together for some reason that they didn't know yet. She knew there was a reason. There had to be one. Things like this didn't just…happen.

Indigo Budapest Barton was never one to believe in fate or the balance of the universe or karma or any of that shit. But that night, the stillness pulling her deeper into the lull of gravity as she stared longingly at the stars, she knew that no matter who she was or what she was meant to be, she believed in Cairo Chesterfield.

And that was enough.

oooooooooo

The next morning she went for a walk. She couldn't keep still, not with her thoughts dashing around her head a mile a minute.

She hadn't really been watching where she was going when she found herself around a particularly deserted part of the street. A dead end, to be exact. She had just turned herself around when she ran into something, or in this case, someone.

"Shit, watch where you're going, Indiana."

Indy sighed. "Nice to see you too, Rozy," she said as she smiled down at the young muslim woman. Her smile faltered a bit as she looked her over a little more thoroughly. Her deep eyes were shadowed in dark circles, gleaming unnaturally. She looked awful.

"Actually, I was just looking for you. Remember the other day when I was telling you about that project I was working on?"

"Yeah, you mentioned it," Indy replied hesitantly.

"Well, I finished it. I think you should see it," she breathed out, dragging Indy behind her with an amount of strength that didn't fit her tired state.

"Rozy, uh, are you sure you're alright? You look like you haven't slept in days," Indy tried half-heartedly as she hung on her limply. Rozy didn't respond. She led her around the corner and down a few deserted alleys until they found themselves in front an abandoned warehouse. What she saw on the far wall made her labored breath catch in her throat.

The wall was at least ten feet tall, the length at least twice that. She had painted the base black, painting what looked to be a cluster of constellations and galxys across the expanse of the wall. The sun and the moon were depicted in both corners, a shadow of a wolf in each one, snarling at each other. A snake coiled itself around the entirety of the mural, its venom dripping onto the sidewalk. Fire licked at the corners, cinders circling the sun and the moon. But the most striking part of the painting was the center.

It looked like a giant wolf-like creature, teeth bared in a manic expression. Chains that had once been restraining the wolf were broken and lashed out against the entirety of the painting, the wolf appearing as though it were coming right at Indy.

She noticed its eyes last. They were piercing, freezing her heart over as she stood rooted to the sidewalk in shock and fear. They were the color of ice, fitting perfectly with the menacing snarl of the beast.

"Oh my god," she whispered finally, eyes stuck onto the wolf's as she tried to pull herself together without collapsing.

"It's…it's Cairo."

oooooooooo

Clint Barton had failed. Clint Barton hadn't failed since his most life-changing mission. That was when he had met Her. He was supposed to terminate Her, that was the mission. He always followed orders, that was until he ran into Her. She was his one and only weakness, everything she was and had ever had been was his flaw. His breaking point was tested, and he failed.

The moment She left him was the moment he had truly failed.

He couldn't do anything. There were no orders, no reconnaissance missions, no directions. He couldn't save Her. He had failed Her, and he would never be forgiven for it. He was reminded of it every time he looked at Indy, the way she saw him through Her eyes. It killed him every single time, but he loved her too much. She was just as much as his weakness as her mother had been.

Now he had to redeem himself for both of them.

He didn't know what happened. Everything had been off lately, to say the least. He was chasing shadows, darkness dancing at the edge of his vision. He didn't know what it was. He hadn't been so uncertain since the time after his mind had been unhinged, back when She was still with him and he wasn't in such a sorry state. Nothing was feeling right, and it unnerved him greatly. The only thing that ever came from these kinds of feelings was never good, and he had a bad idea that that fact was going to come into play sooner than he would like to.

What that was exactly was another manner to be dealt with entirely.

Now he had to deal with this mission, or else a more real issue was going to come into light, and that was the subject of money. After failing that last job, his buyer had given him another chance. He knew this wasn't common curtesy however, so he needed to nail this job or else he was going to find himself in a very bad position. He wasn't sure how he was going to pull this off, let alone deal with his strange sense of paranoia and fear that had recently plagued him. This was a tall order, and there was no place for distractions. He was going to need Indy's help.

oooooooooo

Indy didn't see Cairo Chesterfield the rest of the day.

She didn't see him the next day.

Or the day after that.

Or the week after that.

She had stopped waiting for him after the first week.

Clint had gotten another commission and he needed back up on this one. He hadn't taken her out on a commission since her early training days, but she had a feeling his reason for using her now was a lot different than learning. She saw it in the way he clenched his jaw, his grip on his bow lined with tension as he screwed his face in a focused expression. She knew this wasn't going to be an easy job, and she had a haunting feeling that this one was going to be important.

Ever since she had seen Rozy's haunting mural on the warehouse, she had been plagued with a million questions that no one could answer. Why did everything about her painting seem so familiar, like a dream she couldn't remember but she knew she had it. She was left with vague impressions as she searched her memory, everything from the giant snake to the twin wolves in the sun and the moon. Nothing made sense, but everything fit together in a way she didn't understand. It was like she had all the pieces of the puzzle but she didn't know where they went. She tried telling herself to be rational. Of course, the wolf-monster's eyes hadn't been Cairo's. It had just been a coincidence. It had to have been a coincidence of some sort, just a sick joke the universe was playing on her. She tried to shove her aggressive thoughts of Cairo into a very dark corner of her mind, not trusting herself with them until she could get her emotions under control. This wasn't good on the job, but she had an idea Clint was having the same problem. With what, she wasn't sure, but she knew it couldn't be good. She watched him as closely as she did the progression of the commission, which probably wasn't the best idea, but it was a worry she had to deal with nevertheless.

Nothing seemed right anymore, and it scared her greatly.

Ignorance was always worse than actually being aware, and that had never been more evident to her.

She just had to get this job done.

Then everything would be fine.

At least, that's what she told herself.

oooooooooo

AN: And now, the real confusion begins (I hope you're starting to see what I'm doing here). Thanks for reading, and please follow, favorite and review!


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